Slow

I took the film not as any sort of design for living, or facile explanation of anything, but as a design for communicating — honestly, humanely, painfully, sometimes — for the good of whatever relationships yours happen to be.

[A} quietly affecting work, one of the more engaging romantic dramas to come along in a while.

Playing with the genre trappings of a modern-day romance, “Slow” demands we assess what those familiar beats reveal about how it is we understand such seemingly self-evident concepts like “love,” “desire” and “commitment.”

“Slow,” a relationship drama from Lithuania with a delicate touch, offers an understanding of intimacy that is rare in romance movies.

Slow steadfastly remains a character-driven piece, homing in on the intricacies of its protagonists’ psychologies and engaging with their subtle emotional shifts as they become more intimate with one another.

A supremely confident piece of filmmaking that negotiates the tricky terrain of non-typical sexualities with sensitivity, humour and a refreshing lightness of touch.

It avoids obvious choices because it understands that romance, especially the ones that end, can be meaningful and significant. The film’s final scenes are wistful, the kind of bittersweet tone that many movie romances want but do not actually earn.

In shying away from more specific anxieties of modern love, one can’t help but think of all the things it’s avoiding in general by pushing the onscreen relationship to more interesting places.

The film works on some fundamental levels in spite of the rather amateurish camerawork and narrative pitfalls.

A warm, tender and unflinchingly honest love story.